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Tante Majorie was big all over and so black that her skin had a purple sheen to it. She streaked her high cheekbones with rouge and wore gold gra
She served tea on a silver service, then studied the photo of Eddy Raintree. Her French doors were open on the balcony, and I could hear the night noise from the street. I had known her almost twenty years and had never been able to teach her my correct name.
"You say he got a tiger on his arm?" she asked.
"Yes."
"I 'member him. He use to come, in every three, four mont's. That's the one. I ain't forgot him. He's 'fraid of black people."
"Why do you think that?"
"He always want me to read his hand. But when I pick it up in my fingers, it twitch just like a frog. I'd tell him, It ain't shoe polish, darling'. It ain't go
"He helped murder a sheriff's deputy."
She looked out the French doors at the jungle of potted geraniums, philodendron, and banana trees on her balcony.
"You ain't got to look for him, Mr. Streak. 'that boy ain't got a long way to run," she said.
"What do you mean?"
"I told him it ain't no accident he got that tiger on his arm. I told him tiger burning bright in the forests of the night. Just like in the Bible, glowing out there in the trees. That tiger go
"I respect your wisdom and your experience, Tante Majorie, but I need to find this man."
She twisted a strand of hair between her fingers and gazed thoughtfully at a calico cat nursing a half-dozen kittens in a cardboard box.
"Every noon I send out astrology readings for people on my list," she said. "He's one of them people. But Raintree ain't the name he give me. I don't 'member the name he give me. Maybe you ain't suppose to find him, Mr. Streak."
"My name's Dave, Tante Majorie. Could I see your list?"
"It ain't go
Then she went into the back of the apartment and returned with several sheets of typing paper in her hand.
"I got maybe two hundred people here," she said. "They're spread all over Lou'sana and Mississippi, too."
"Well, let's take a look," I said. "You see, Tante Majorie, the interesting thing about these guys is their ego. So when they use an alias they usually keep their initials. Or maybe their aliases have the same sound value as their real names."
Her list was in alphabetical order. I sorted the pages to the "R's."
"How about Elton Rubert?" I asked.
"I don't 'member it, Mr. Davis. My clerk must have put it down, and he don't work here anymore."
"My name is Dave, Tante Majorie. Dave Robicheaux. Where's your clerk now?"
"He moved up to Ohio, or one of them places up North."
I wrote down the mailing address of Elton Rubert, a tavern in a small settlement out in the Atchafalaya basin west of Baton Rouge.
"Here's my business card," I said. "If the man in the photo shows up here again, read his palm or whatever he wants, then call me later. But don't question him or try to find out anything about him for me, Tante Majorie. You've already been a great help."
"Give me your hand."
"I beg your pardon?" She reached out and took my hand, stared into my palm and kneaded it with her fingers. Then she stroked it as though she were smoothing bread dough.
"There's something I ain't told you," she said. "The last time that man was in here, I read his hand, just like I'm reading yours. He axed me what his lifeline was like. What I didn't tell him, what he didn't know, was he didn't have no lifeline. It was gone."
I looked at her.
"You ain't understood me, darling'," she said. "When your lifeline's gone, his kind get it back by stealing somebody else's." She folded my thumb and fingers into a fist, then pressed it into a ball with her palms. I could feel the heat and oil in her skin. "You hold on to it real hard, Mr. Streak. That tiger don't care who it eat."
I had had trouble finding a parking place earlier and had left my pickup over by Rampart Street, not far from the lberville welfare project. When I rounded the corner I saw the passenger door agape, the window smashed out on the pavement, the fla
Because First District headquarters was only two blocks away, it took only an hour to get a uniformed officer there to make out the theft report that my insurance company would require. Then I walked to a drugstore on Canal, called Triple A for a wrecker, and called Bootsie and told her that I wouldn't be home as I had promised, that with any luck I could have the truck repaired by late tomorrow.
"Where will you stay tonight?" she asked.
"At Clete's."
"Dave, if the truck isn't fixed tomorrow, take the bus back home and we'll go get the truck later. Tomorrow's Friday. Let's have a nice weekend."
"I may have to check out a lead on the way back. It might be a dud, but I can't let it hang."
"Does this have to do with Drew?"
"No, not at all."
"Because I wouldn't want to interfere."
"This may be the guy who tried to take my head off with a crowbar."
"Oh God, Dave, give it up, at least for a while."
"It doesn't work that way. The other side doesn't do pit stops."
"How clever," she said. "I'll leave the answering machine on in case we're in town."
"Come on, Boots, don't sign off like that."
"It's been a long day. I'm just tired. I don't mean what I say."
"Don't worry, everything's going to be fine. I'll call in the morning. Tell Alafair we'll go crabbing on the bay Saturday."
I was ready to say goodnight, then she said, as though she were speaking out of a mist, "Remember what they used to teach us in Catholic school about virginity? They said it was better to remain a virgin until you married so you wouldn't make comparisons. Do you ever make comparisons, Dave?"
I closed my eyes and swallowed as a man might if he looked up one su
When I was recuperating from the bouncing Betty that sent me home from Vietnam, and I began my long courtship with insomnia, I used to muse sometimes on what were the worst images or degrees of fear that my dreams could present me with. In my i